


an endless road to rediscover (or, four times Ted and Charlie hugged)

by Hibou_Gris



Category: Life (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 15:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15146279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hibou_Gris/pseuds/Hibou_Gris
Summary: Ted's got time. He's also got Charlie.





	an endless road to rediscover (or, four times Ted and Charlie hugged)

**Author's Note:**

> I went old-school with this story. I watched Life for the first time recently and all I want to do is write 'soft epilogues' for everyone, as the poet says. 
> 
> Everything Charlie says concerning Zen is likely lifted directly from the Wikipedia entry on Zen Buddhism. I know very little about Zen, or the American prison system. Please forgive any inaccuracies. The title is from Hey Brother by Avicii. The conversation between Charlie and Ted about Ted being good with money is echoing the one on the show between Charlie and Connie.

1.

Ted’s first conversation with Charlie went like this:

The guard barked, “Crews! You’ve got a new cellmate!” and the red-haired guy on the top bunk looked up from the book he was reading. 

Ted stepped into the cell, holding his meager belongings in his arms. He squared his shoulders and put on his best tough-guy face. He was aware it needed some work. 

“Don’t bite this one, Crews,” the guard said over his shoulder as he left.

Ted stared after him in shock, and then whipped his head back towards Crews, who was watching him expressionlessly. He didn’t look very scary, but Ted was only two days into his sentence and he had already learned the hard way that he was a shit judge of character when it came to prison. He could still feel the bruises every time he moved.

“Hey,” Ted said. He tried not to sound nervous. He was pretty sure he sounded nervous.

“Hi,” Crews said. 

“Did you bite your last cellmate?” Ted blurted out. 

Crews blinked at him. “No.”

“Right, of course not, I didn’t really think –” Ted said, and then made himself shut up.

“He wasn’t my cellmate,” Crews said.

“Who?”

“The guy I bit,” Crews said.

“Oh. Okay,” Ted said.

“It was mostly an accident,” Crews said. “I thought he was someone else.”

“Sure,” Ted said. He felt metal against his back and realized that he had backed all the way up to the door of the cell.

Crews went back to his book. Ted tried to convince his body to do anything other than remain frozen in terror as far away from Crews as possible.

It went on like that for a few weeks. Ted tiptoed around the cell, keeping one eye on Crews at all times; Crews ignored him, pored over his book like it held the secrets to existence, and had upsettingly loud nightmares a couple of times a week. 

Outside of their shared cell, Ted learned the hellish routine that was prison life, and more importantly, tried to absorb every scrap of knowledge that might give him a chance of surviving the next few years. 

Some of what he heard was about Crews:

“Dirty cop, killed a whole family. I heard he killed some guys in here, too.”

“He’s a fucking psycho, he tried to rip out Jackson’s throat in the lunch-line –”

“Nah, that asshole was fine, barely bleeding. He shouldn’t have been hassling Crews. Everyone knows he just got out after two years in the hole – yeah, I shit you not. Anyone would be fucked-up after that.”

“They put him in Psych for a month after the thing with Jackson. Still talks fucking looney tunes.”

“He used to take a lot of shit for being a cop, but that was before – there was this guard, real hard-ass. Crews took him out. The other guards beat the shit out of him and left him in SHU for over a year. So.”

“Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, Earley. Who knows what’s going on in that crazy fuck’s head?”

One night, Ted snapped awake, blinking into the gloom of the cell. Crews was climbing down from the top bunk. Ted froze stock-still. He watched Crews hop onto the ground, and then start moving around restlessly. This was it, this was the night Crews was coming to kill him, or rape him, or god knows what.

Crews disappeared from view, and Ted lay still, waiting, running through frantic options in his head. None of them seemed likely to end well for him.

Nothing happened, and then nothing happened some more, so Ted raised his head ever so slightly. Crews was lying down on his back in the middle of the floor, limbs splayed out like a starfish. He was breathing, so not dead. But still – not dead could cover a lot of things. Should he poke the deranged bear that was his cellmate, or leave a possibly injured man to die on the floor of their cell?

Ted whispered, “Hey – you okay?”

There was a pause, and then Crews said, “I’m –” and let out a deep sigh. “Did you know that all suffering is caused by selfish desire and attachment to material things?”

“Uh,” Ted said.

“Do you know anything about Zen?”

“No, not really,” Ted said.

“Yeah,” Crews said, sounding resigned. “That’s okay. Can I ask you something, Ted? Can I call you Ted? I guess that’s a lot of questions already.”

Ted was not awake enough for this conversation. He sat up slowly, and swung his legs out from under the blanket so he could sit on the edge of the bed. “Sure. I mean – you can call me Ted, and you can ask me something.”

“You can call me Charlie,” Crews said. He didn’t move from his position on the floor, but he turned his head to look at Ted. “Why are you here, Ted?”

Ted hesitated. “Is that a Zen question? Like, why are we all here, type of thing?”

“No,” Crews said patiently, “it’s a regular question. I asked around – all your crimes were white collar. How did you end up in Pelican Bay? Shouldn’t you be in some quiet minimum security lock-up?”

“The judge said – I tried to run, you know, when they came to arrest me, and he said that factored in, and the magnitude of the crimes, and – resisting arrest –”

Crews cocked an eyebrow at him.

Ted dropped his head into his hands. “And I pissed off a lot of people, okay? A lot of rich, powerful people who lost their money, who have influence, and who probably want me dead.”

The truth of it hit him all over again, like a rockslide crashing down directly on his head. “They want me dead. They think I’m going to die in here.” Ted heaved in air through the sudden tightness in his chest. “Oh god, I am, I’m going to die in here.”

He curled down over his knees, breaths coming in wet uneven gasps. He had been lying to himself, thinking he might actually make it through this. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, he was going to be dead or wish that he were.

“Hey – hey, Ted, c’mon,” Crews said. 

Ted could hear him getting up off the floor, and then Crews sat down next to him on the bed.

“Ted, you’re not going to die in here,” Crews said. He even mostly sounded like he meant it.

Ted nodded, face still buried in his hands, trying to pull himself together. He was shaking a little, and he couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat.

“C’mon,” Crews said, his voice gentle. He put a tentative arm around Ted’s shoulders. “Is – this okay?”

Ted scraped out a, “yeah,” and let Crews pull him into an awkward sideways hug, because why the hell not? His life was a shit-heap, a horrible waking nightmare of his own creation, so why shouldn’t he get some comfort from the murderer that he shared a cell with?

After a minute, Ted sniffed hard and wiped his face off on his sleeve, his breathing slowly going back to normal. He sat up and took a deep breath, and Crews lifted his arm away and shuffled over a few inches along the bed. Crews looked skittish and uncomfortable, and weirdly, that made Ted feel better. 

“Sorry,” Ted said.

Crews shrugged, and said, “You should stick close to me in the yard, and at meals, whenever you can. I get left alone. Usually.”

Ted felt his stomach sink, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t have seen this coming. “Oh. You want me to –”

“No,” Crews said, sharp, already shaking his head, and got up from the bed to stand back against the wall of the cell with his arms crossed. “No, I really don’t.” He hesitated, then added quietly, “People will think that’s why. But it’ll be safer for you.”

“Yeah,” Ted said. He cleared his throat, looked up at Charlie Crews; ex-cop, killer, possible psycho, someone he didn’t understand at all. “Okay, yeah. Thanks, Charlie.”

Charlie shrugged again. “Can I talk to you about Zen? Sometime?”

“Sure,” Ted said. “Anytime you want.”

 

2\. 

Ted ended up in solitary for the first time five months into his sentence. The reason the guards gave was: fighting. The real reason was that some asshole and his friends had tried to kill him in the yard, and Charlie had killed the asshole instead.

The cells in the Security Housing Unit were small and cold, and smelled like bleach. Ted stared at the walls, unless he was lying down and then he stared at the ceiling. He touched the bandage on his side where the blade had left a shallow gash, and the bruise on his head where he’d slammed into the ground after Charlie had knocked him out of the way. He thought about Charlie spending over a year in a room like this, alone.

Three days later, Ted was out. Clearly not even the worst of the guards thought that he was responsible for what had happened, or cared enough to bother with punishing him for long. 

Diaz escorted him back to his regular cell, and he was definitely not the worst of the guards so Ted risked asking, “When’s Charlie getting out?”

Diaz snorted. “Don’t worry about your boyfriend, Earley. Everyone saw what went down, that fucker deserved what he got.”

Ted gritted his teeth, but said only, “Sure. Could you give him this, please?” and handed him _The Path to Zen_. Diaz took it with an eye-roll.

Diaz was right – there had been plenty of witnesses to the fight by the time Charlie had dealt the killing blow; there was no question what had happened, that Charlie had been acting in self-defense. 

The guards kept Charlie in solitary for another two weeks, all the same. Ted came back from dinner one evening to find him pacing around their cell. 

“Charlie!” Ted said, half-laughing with relief, but Charlie flinched when Ted stepped towards him with his arms outstretched.

Ted froze mid-motion. “I was gonna hug you.”

“Right,” Charlie said. “Sure, okay. I’m just – ” He waved a hand through the air. “They took my knife.”

He still looked jumpy, and when Ted leaned in to hug him, keeping it quick and light, he could feel Charlie thrumming with nervous energy, clearly in one of his more manic moods. But after a moment Charlie relaxed, and lifted his arms to return the hug.

“It’s good to see you,” Ted said, letting go. His eyes dropped to the healing cuts on Charlie’s forearms and hands, left over from the fight. A couple of them were still taped over with gauze. “Are you – ”

Charlie backed away and resumed his pacing. “Physical injuries aren’t metaphysically real, Ted.”

“Okay, but they’re still real-real,” Ted said. He sat down on his bed, watching Charlie move back and forth across the narrow length of their cell.

“What is real-real, exactly?” Charlie asked. 

“Charlie –”

“Don’t look so worried, Ted,” Charlie said, relenting, and gave him a flicker of a smile. “Barely any stitches at all this time.”

“Great,” Ted said, trying not to think too hard about _this time_. He’d seen Charlie’s scars. He touched his side, remembered sunlight flashing off of metal, the taste of fear bitter in his mouth. “Charlie. Thank you. I don’t know how – ”

“The cafeteria food isn’t metaphysically real,” Charlie said brightly, spinning away from him to walk to the far end of the cell. “And maybe not real-real, either, now that I think about it. But tomorrow’s french fry day, right?”

“Yeah, Charlie,” Ted said, resigned.

“Good, thought I’d lost track,” Charlie said. “And hey – thanks for the book. I appreciated it.”

Ted sighed. “You’re welcome.”

He picked up his own book from the end of his bed and flipped to the right page, leaving Charlie to his pacing and occasional Zen non-sequiturs, to which Ted responded with distracted grunts. 

It was nearly time for lights-out when Ted heard Charlie say softly, “I had to.”

Ted jerked his head up from his book. “What?”

Charlie was sitting down against the wall of the cell, knees drawn up, staring down at his hands. “I had to do it. I didn’t want to.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Ted swallowed hard. He put down his book and went to sit beside Charlie on the ground, their shoulders just brushing. “Charlie – you saved my life. He would have killed me, and you too. Yeah, you had to.”

Charlie nodded, but kept staring down at his hands, twisting his fingers together.

They sat in silence for a minute. The regular noises of the prison at night echoed off the walls around them, shouting and cursing and quieter, more desperate sounds. 

Ted said, without really thinking about it, “Have you ever killed anyone before?” 

A second later his brain caught up with the depth of his mouth’s stupidity, but before he could take it back, and possibly also punch himself in the face, Charlie was already answering the question. 

“Once,” Charlie said, his voice distant. “Krugman, another inmate. It was the same – I had to. He was trying to kill me. He had a screwdriver.”

Charlie suddenly seemed to hear Ted’s question, to _really_ hear it, and he snapped his head around to stare at Ted. Whatever he saw on Ted’s face made his eyes turn hard and bitter.

“Once. Only once,” Charlie said. He had gone very still. “You don’t believe me.”

“I –” Ted said, caught. Charlie had told him early on, in a deeply neutral voice, that he had gotten a new lawyer who was trying to re-open his case and overturn his sentence. Ted had said, “Sure, great,” and they had never spoken about it again. Ted had spent a lot of time since then being desperately grateful to Charlie, and trying not to think too hard about the terrible things that Charlie had done. He’d seen Charlie in plenty of fights now, and he understood why the other inmates were afraid of him. Charlie wasn’t as big as some of the real bruisers in Pelican Bay, but he was a cold and vicious fighter, and he moved like a rattlesnake. 

Charlie was clenching his hands tightly together. Ted had seen what Charlie could do with a knife in those hands. And yet – Ted wasn’t afraid of him, not even now. Not anymore. He’d seen Charlie’s violence, but he’d seen his kindness too.

Ted said, slowly, “I heard there was a guard.”

Charlie’s face twisted, just for a second, and the rage was still there but Ted saw something like shame as well. Charlie looked back down at his hands, his expression flattening into blankness.

“He didn’t die,” he said, very quietly.

Ted knew that prison was full of liars, some of Oscar-winning caliber; he counted himself among them. He didn’t know if Charlie was capable of killing a family – people were capable of all sorts of surprising things if they were pushed hard enough, after all. But he didn’t think that Charlie was capable of denying it without a shred of guilt, not when it was spilling out of him for attacking a guard who had been, by all accounts, a truly sadistic son of a bitch.

“Okay,” Ted said. “I believe you.”

Charlie looked at him warily.

“About all of it. I believe you,” Ted said. He leaned sideways, gently bumping Charlie’s shoulder.

Charlie closed his eyes, let out a long, slow breath, and bumped back.

 

3\. 

It was two weeks into a shitty, rainy January, and one week to Ted’s parole hearing, and his daughter wasn’t taking his calls. He’d tried asking his ex-wife to talk to Ann, but she’d snorted and said, “Honestly, Ted. Do you think she listens to anything I tell her? Besides, can you really blame her? It’s not like you were father of the year even before the prison sentence.”

Ted couldn’t blame her, but it still hurt like a gut-punch. He was stewing over it in the yard that afternoon, trying and failing to be optimistic about his post-prison future, so it took him a while to notice Charlie’s uncharacteristic silence. Ted knew that Charlie had had a meeting with his lawyer earlier, and usually Charlie came back from seeing Connie with a small dreamy smile on his face and a general air of obnoxious cheerfulness. But today Charlie just sat quietly next to Ted on the bleachers, staring up at the dull gray sky beyond the outer walls.

“How did your meeting with Connie go?” Ted asked. 

“It –” Charlie shook his head.

“Bad news?” Ted asked, really worried now. The wheels of the justice system were notoriously slow, and Charlie’s case had been churning through them for years. But so far Connie’s stubbornness had always prevailed.

“No – good news,” Charlie said. He spoke like the words were unfamiliar in his mouth. “The DNA test results came back. They’re all negative – none of the DNA found at the crime scene was mine.”

“What? That’s amazing, that’s – ” Ted said, turning to stare at him. “That’s great news! It’s what you’ve been waiting for, right?”

“It’s still preliminary, they’re going to check and re-check the results, so it’s not for sure yet – but yeah,” Charlie said, keeping his gaze on the sky. “Connie says it’s the linchpin. She says that she’s going to get me out.”

“Charlie, that’s terrific –” Ted enthused, and then glanced around the yard nervously. No one seemed to be listening in on their conversation, but he lowered his voice anyway. “Thank God, Charlie. Thank God for that woman.”

Ted stopped talking, suddenly unsure. Charlie still wouldn’t look at him, and he’d delivered the news as though he was telling Ted that the forecast called for some light showers tomorrow. “But you’re not happy? You don’t think it’s going to happen?”

“I trust Connie,” Charlie said. He took a deep breath. “I just – I don’t know. It’s too much. I don’t really believe it yet, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Ted said. Hope had been a fragile bird fluttering in his chest over the last few months as the date of his parole hearing drew closer and closer, and it was as frightening as it was uplifting – it meant he had something to lose. “How long has it –”

“1995,” Charlie said, his voice flat. “I’ve been inside since 1995.”

“Fuck,” Ted said.

Charlie’s mouth turned up at the corner. “Yeah.” 

“God, Charlie. I’m sorry,” Ted said, uselessly. Twelve years, gone. What could he even say?

Charlie rolled his shoulders, then glanced over at Ted. “Did you reach Ann yet?”

“No,” Ted said, “I don’t think she – well. I don’t think she wants to talk to me right now.”

“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Charlie said. His eyes slid back to the sky. The gray clouds were rolling westwards, the sun just starting to break through.

“Yeah. Maybe,” Ted said.

Charlie was quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the day, and Ted tried to give him some space. Doing his own time had been hard enough; his mind shuddered away when he tried to imagine what Charlie’s had been like. Twelve years. Twelve years, and innocent, and a cop.

Ted was halfway asleep that night when he heard a strange, stifled noise from the bunk above him. He thought, vaguely embarrassed, that Charlie was probably jerking off, and closed his eyes again, waiting to slip back into sleep. But – 

Ted opened his eyes. The noise was wrong, it – 

“Charlie?”

There was no answer. Ted slid out of bed, standing up next to his bunk so that he could see into Charlie’s. Charlie was lying on his side, facing away, his shoulders curled in. He was breathing in sharp, shuddering gasps.

“Hey – Charlie – ” Ted reached for him, touching his shoulder gently. He could feel Charlie shaking, his whole body locked into a paroxysm of grief, miserable and near-silent. Ted’s own throat was so tight that he didn’t think he would be able to speak another word, even if he could think of something to say that wasn’t a pointless, comforting lie. Charlie didn’t pull away, so Ted moved closer, stepping up onto the side of his own bunk so that he could lean in and wrap his arm around Charlie, press his forehead against Charlie’s shoulder, hold him through it. 

They stayed like that until the sound of a guard’s approaching footsteps alerted them to the patrol. Ted felt Charlie’s hand grab his own and squeeze it once, hard, before letting go, and then Ted pulled away and scrambled back into his own bunk, and they were both alone again in the dark.

 

4.

It wasn’t even eight in the morning yet, and it was already getting hot. Ted’s apartment didn’t have AC, so he turned on the fan and set it on the edge of the kitchen sink while he waited for his toast. Bad coffee and toast with margarine, breakfast of champions, at least when you were seven months out of prison with a crappy job and not much hope for a better one. 

He tried not to think like that, tried to hold on to the overwhelming relief that he’d felt every moment when he’d first been released, but it crept up on him anyway. He spent a lot of time trying not to think about the expensive coffee he used to drink, about the cockroaches that ran across the floor of his apartment at night, about the grinding drudgery of the job the halfway house had gotten for him, about how easy it would be to find someone who would sell him coke.

The one bright spot was the headlines he’d seen over the last month – Charlie was out at last, a free man, and a rich man if the guesses about the size of the settlement he’d received were anywhere near accurate. Ted had whooped with joy and thrown his arms up in the air when he’d first seen the news, and fuck all the people in the corner store who’d given him strange looks.

He had meant to go back to Pelican Bay to visit him, but had never actually managed it. The thought of stepping back through those gates and hearing the doors clicking shut behind him had been too much; the idea alone put Ted on the edge of panic, his stomach clenched and his hands cold and tingling. He couldn’t do it, not even for Charlie. 

But now Charlie Crews was free, and Ted walked through his own tedious, grimy days feeling like a weight had been lifted. 

The toast popped up with a ding, and Ted grabbed it and dropped it onto a plate just as someone started knocking at the door. He dithered for a second, and then quickly smeared some margarine on the toast and stuffed half of it in his mouth as he headed for the door. 

He put his eye to the peep-hole, calling, “Who is it?” around a mouthful of toast.

Charlie was standing in the hallway outside his apartment. “It’s me, Charlie,” he yelled back through the door, as though Ted might have him confused with some other red-headed prison buddy. 

Ted nearly choked on his toast, coughing and trying to swallow it and get the door open at the same time. He finally managed both, and flung the door open to reveal Charlie, who wearing an expensive suit and a wide smile, and seemed taller somehow, which was impossible. Ted gaped at him.

”Charlie!”

“Ted!” Charlie said, jubilant, and threw his arms around Ted in an enthusiastic hug. Ted hugged him back automatically, still in shock, before stepping back to stare at him in total confusion.

“You smell like oranges,” Ted said stupidly. 

Charlie just grinned wider. “There’s a bag of them in the car. I was eating them on the way over.”

“What – but – why are you here?” Ted asked, gesturing wildly. He was still holding half of his toast. 

“Why are we all here, really?” Charlie asked in his Zen voice, and then laughed when Ted groaned in protest. “I’m here to see you, Ted. Come on, let’s go get breakfast.”

“I would, Charlie, I mean it, it’s great to see you, and I’m so happy for you – but I have to go to work in ten minutes,” Ted said. “And I already had breakfast.” He held up the toast and Charlie made a face. 

“We can do better than that. And since you mention it, I actually want to talk to you about a job opportunity. I’m taking applications for a financial advisor position, and you’re the top candidate,” Charlie said. “So think of it like a business breakfast!”

Ted stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“I’ve got a lot of money and I don’t know what to do with it. You’re good with money,” Charlie said with a shrug.

“Charlie – I _stole_ a lot of money,” Ted said, lowering his voice and really hoping that none of his neighbors were listening.

Charlie looked him dead in the eye. “Are you going to steal my money?”

“No! God, no,” Ted said, horrified.

“Okay, then you’re hired,” Charlie said. 

He sounded perfectly serious, and Ted barked out a laugh, looking away. “I don’t – how can you – ”

“Ted. Call in sick to work,” Charlie said. “Come have breakfast with me, and we’ll talk about it.” He waved invitingly towards the exit. “There are oranges in the car!”

“Well – well, okay, sure,” Ted said, smiling, giving in despite himself.

Charlie beamed at him, and then peeked over Ted’s shoulder into his tiny drab apartment. “We can also talk about your living situation. I’m gonna buy a house, and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of extra room.”

“Oh, there’s no way,” Ted said.

 

5\. (and one time it was more of a group thing)

It was nearly noon and they were running late, but luckily so was Olivia. Taking a quick look at his phone, Ted saw that she’d sent another text: _sorry, still stuck in traffic, ETA 15 min_.

Ted went back to rummaging through the fridge for lunch ingredients. According to Ann all the food at the zoo would be hideously overpriced garbage, so they had to bring lunch. They had plenty of bread for sandwiches, but not a lot of options for sandwich fillings. He had just bought groceries three days ago, how had all the food in the damn house disappeared already? 

“Who ate all the cold cuts?” Ted demanded, shoving aside a pineapple and a bag of peaches.

“Don’t look at me,” Ann said. She was still struggling with Little Ted at the kitchen table; Little Ted having apparently decided that today should be a no-sock day. Little Ted shrieked, kicking his feet and sending a sock flying across the room. 

“Can’t he just wear sandals?” Ted asked.

Ann shot him a nasty look. “No, I told you, he gets sick of them after an hour and takes them off and throws them out of the stroller. I don’t want to lose another pair.”

“Fine, fine,” Ted said, grabbing a package of cheese from the fridge. The bag of avocados on the counter must be mostly ripe by now. Cheese and avocado sandwiches it was, then. 

Charlie wandered into the kitchen, and Ted started to say, “Charlie, did you eat all the cold cuts? I bought –” when Reese walked in behind him, wearing a tank top and a pair of Charlie’s sweatpants. 

Ted stuttered to a stop, and earned himself a defensive glare from Reese, but it was halfhearted; there was a smile still hovering at the corners of her mouth. Charlie just looked glowingly, unabashedly happy. He touched Reese on the arm and she transferred her glare to him for a second, before rolling her eyes and bee-lining for the fridge. 

“We ate the cold cuts last night,” Reese said, opening the fridge and pulling out the bag of peaches. “Sorry.”

“Oh – uh, no problem,” Ted said. “You want coffee? There’s coffee.”

“Sure,” Reese said. She looked up from the peaches and gave Ted a quick nod of acknowledgement. Ted returned it.

Charlie smiled benevolently at both of them. “I’ll get the coffee.” 

He started to move past Ted, heading for the coffee machine, and Ted was swept with a rush of emotion, an echo of the same joy that Charlie was radiating. He was just – so grateful for his life, for this house and his job, for busy mornings in the kitchen bickering with his daughter over Little Ted’s cacophony, for mostly ripe avocadoes, for zoo trips; for Olivia, who was on her way to spend the day with him and his family, and who kissed him like she didn’t know the worst of him.

On impulse, Ted reached out to Charlie as he went past and pulled him into a hug, burying his face in Charlie’s shoulder. He didn’t know how to say – how he could possibly explain – 

Charlie hugged him back, a little unsure. “Good morning to you too, Ted.”

“Sorry,” Ted muttered into Charlie’s neck. “Just – thank you.”

Charlie’s arms tightened around him, and Ted was honest to God worried that one or both of them was about to start crying, but fortunately Little Ted, finally wearing his shoes and socks, saved them by rocketing away from his mother with a wail and slamming his small sturdy body into the back of Ted’s legs, clearly feeling left out. 

Ted started laughing, clutching Charlie’s arms, and when Ann rushed over to scoop up Little Ted, he tugged them both into the hug as well.

Ann said, “Dad, come on, we’re late,” but Little Ted was burbling happily, stretching his arms and trying to grab everyone’s noses, and when Ted grinned at him and then at Ann, she smiled back, and leaned into his side. 

Charlie, his eyes lit up with glee, had taken the opportunity to snake out his arm and yank Reese into their circle as well, despite her grumbling, “Crews, I don’t do group hugs.” She wrapped her arms around Charlie and Ann all the same, and wrinkled her nose at Little Ted to make him laugh.

“Oh, what the hell,” Rachel’s voice came from the kitchen entrance, and that set Ted off again, laughing like he hadn’t in ages, deep belly laughs. Charlie yelled, “Rachel! Group hug! Get in here!”

“God, you guys are so embarrassing,” Rachel said, but walked over and joined their jostling, ridiculous hug, and Ted could hear the doorbell ringing, Olivia probably waiting outside, and Ted was luckier than he had any right to be, and so thankful for all of it. 

“Thank you,” he said again to Charlie, quietly, under all the chaos.

“Sure,” Charlie said. “Anytime.”


End file.
